The aviation, space, and defence industries rely on the development and manufacture of complex products comprised of multiple systems, subsystems, and components each designed by individual designers (design activities) at various levels within the supply chain. Each design or manufacturing activity controls various aspects of the configuration and specifications related to the product. When a change to design or process is requested or required, the change is typically required to be evaluated against the impacts to the entire system.

Proposed changes to design data/information that the design activity identifies to be minor and have no effect on the product requirements or specifications, have the potential to be implemented and approved, where authorized to do so, but require notification. Changes that affect customer mandated requirements or specifications are approved prior to implementation. In many cases, the design activity is not conducted by the DAH or design authority. The design activity might be several layers below the design approval. Irrespective of where the design activity is conducted in the supply chain, notification is required. The typical change notification flow is presented in Figure 1.

Submitting NOC data either electronically or conventionally on paper is subject to the terms and conditions of the customer’s contract. This also includes, where applicable, data access under the regulations of export control.

The process of exchanging, coordinating, and approving NOC data varies with the multiple relationships and agreements among all organizations concerned. An objective of this document is to provide the definition of a data set that can be integrated into any form of communication (e.g. electronic data interchange, submission of conventional paper forms). A sample form can be found in the Supply Chain Management Handbook (SCMH).

If all or part of this document is contractually invoked, design organizations and design holders (i.e. the organization responsible for the productend item design) that have responsibility for change management of products used on other higher-level designs will use the information and processes defined in this document for submitting change notifications.